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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23891035">(run and) chase</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/malignance/pseuds/malignance'>malignance</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Descendants (Disney Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 16:07:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,608</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23891035</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/malignance/pseuds/malignance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Mal leaves for the Isle in the middle of the night, a flurry of fake blonde hair and worn leather.</p><p>She runs, because she knows he'll come chasing.</p><p>(But the rules of the game can't always stay the same.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ben/Evie (Disney: Descendants)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>67</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>(run and) chase</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mal leaves for the Isle in the middle of the night, a flurry of fake blonde hair and worn leather.</p><p>She runs, because she needs to find the pieces of herself she thought she had lost.</p><p>She runs, because she knows he'll come chasing.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>"Mal's gone back to the Isle." Evie confesses, face a little pale, mouth set into a slight frown.</p><p>Ben sucks in a breath, and keeps it there between his lungs and his throat.</p><p>He catalogues everything he feels in that instant. The devastation, the dread, the shock.</p><p><em>The relief</em>.</p><p>"I have to go." He chokes out, though the sound of his own voice gets drowned out by the sound of his heart hammering behind his chest. "I have to go and bring her back."</p><p>The intent is there, the intent is loud, but the conviction? Where is the conviction? Where is the desperate want, the <em>need </em>to have her back?</p><p>Evie looks him dead in the eyes, lips pressed tight together, wearing the determination he doesn't have on her face so boldly, so assuredly.</p><p>"I'm going with you." She cements.</p><p>He exhales, finally.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>There is a darkness in the Isle that clings to Ben's skin uncomfortably, unforgivingly.</p><p>Evie breezes past, and he marvels at how she can walk so easily, so free, as if the air isn't suffocating her every step of the way.</p><p>(But it's not a skill to be admired, he realises later. It's not a skill to be praised for.)</p><p>"What if I-" He begins, stuttering through his doubts so he doesn't have to keep them quiet. "What if I can't-"</p><p>Evie stops him with a look, a hard stare, a hand on her hip. "Don't say that. Not yet. If Mal will listen to anyone, she'll listen to you."</p><p>Something about the way she looks at him, like she could hate him if this doesn't work, cools his nerves almost immediately. Something about the hardness in her gaze, the strength behind them, scares him beyond his doubts.</p><p>"Right. You're right. Thank you." He attempts a smile here, though he isn't sure who he's trying to fool with it.</p><p>She however, can smile properly despite his trembling, something half sad and pitying, but genuine all the same.</p><p>"Good luck."</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>"Mal." Ben breathes, eyes wide and scared and hopeful. "Please come home."</p><p>If Mal was honest, that was exactly what she had been waiting to hear. But just because he says exactly what she wants him to, doesn't mean he understands, doesn't mean he hears her.</p><p>"How can I? How can I, when you haven't even figured out why I left in the first place?"</p><p>Looking at him like this, so afraid and confused at the same time, it cuts, it really does, but Mal doesn't know how else to tell him, how else to show him. She is done trying to pretend to be someone she isn't, trying to fit into other people's carefully crafted moulds. She wants him to understand how it has broken her trying to fold herself into the box of being the perfect girlfriend, she wants him to tell her she doesn't need to change to be by his side.</p><p>The one thing she really, actually wants to hear him say is that he doesn't need anything else but her, that he doesn't need anything other than her love.</p><p>"I'm sorry. I'll do better, I just- I just need some time. Please just come back, and then we can try and fix things. We can talk, and you can explain it all to me and I'll try my best to-"</p><p>"-Ben..." She sighs his name in resignation (and his heart doesn't break. No, it doesn't break. And maybe that's worse). "This <em>is</em> my home. You should go."</p><p>So he goes.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>There is no dignity in being tied up and forced to balance on the edge of a plank.</p><p>Yet, somehow, that is not the worst of the situation.</p><p>Mal looks at him with sad eyes, eyes that glimmer with pity and guilt and disappointment.</p><p>And that hurts yes, it stings.</p><p>But Evie's, Evie's deep brown eyes, narrowed and angry, they knock the breath out of his lungs.</p><p>He'd promised her, hadn't he? That he could do this, that they could make it out unscathed.</p><p>She'd warned him, hadn't she? That she wouldn't forgive him, that she would hate him if he couldn't pull it off.</p><p>Faced with that reality now, that he had let her down, that if he made it out of this alive she might despise him, that hits him harder than anything else.</p><p>"I'm sorry." He mouths, because what else can he do but be sorry?</p><p>Her left brow twitches, her hands clench into fists at her side. "If you're sorry, make it out of this in one piece."</p><p>He doesn't need to be told twice.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The smell of blood floats between them in the closed space of the limo.</p><p>None of it had been theirs, in the end, but it is not much of a comfort.</p><p>Mal sits beside Ben, brewing a quiet storm in the corner. Ben doesn't dare face her.</p><p>He looks, instead, to Evie, who's running her hands through Carlos' hair as he drifts off to sleep on her lap.</p><p>"Are you hurt?" Ben whispers, too quiet for Mal to pick up as she's lost in her thoughts, and all too easy for Evie to catch with all her senses still on edge from the fight.</p><p>Evie tucks her bottom lip between her teeth for a few seconds, before finally picking her head up to face him. "Are you an idiot?"</p><p>The question catches him off guard, makes him flinch just the slightest. "Sorry. I know I promised nothing would happen and that I could convince Mal to come back. I know I let you down. I'm sorry, really."</p><p>"Ben!" She croaks, voice cracking, eyes shining with unshed tears. </p><p>He snaps his mouth shut.</p><p>"Ben," She continues, quieter, "I don't care that you broke the promise, I don't care that you couldn't convince Mal. I care that you got <em>kidnapped, </em>that you got <em>tied up, </em>that you almost- that you almost <em>died. </em>Don't you get that?"</p><p>She lowers her head, just as tears start to fall, dripping onto Carlos' cheek and rolling off his chin.</p><p>Something about this picture, the image of Evie crying for him, because of him, makes his chest constrict uncomfortably, makes him unable to breathe.</p><p>Mal turns to finally look at him.</p><p>He doesn't notice.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Ben's world tilts, and tilts, and tilts, and then stops, just before everything is upside down.</p><p>His head feels empty, his mouth feels dry. He cannot hear the music, cannot hear the people, cannot see past the turquoise blue.</p><p>But sometimes, just sometimes, when he catches a glimpse of brown eyes and red lips, all the sounds come rushing in again, just for a moment.</p><p>He can tell something isn't right, but what did he feel like before this? He doesn't know anymore. He doesn't think.</p><p>He is in love. That's all. That's it.</p><p>"Uma, I-"</p><p><em>Uma, I love you, </em>is what he means to say. And yet, the words are stuck in his throat, choking him, like a part of him is stopping him from saying it out loud, like a part of him recognises that it isn't true, that it can't be true.</p><p>"What is it, Ben?" Uma asks, with a patience that's quickly wearing thin. "What do you have to tell me?"</p><p>He sucks in a breath. "Uma, I lo-" He freezes again, his mouth open but no sounds coming out.</p><p>"Say it!" She hisses, eyes darting around wildly to everyone surrounding them. "You're trying to say you love me, aren't you?"</p><p>
  <em>But he doesn't.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He doesn't!</em>
</p><p>"I- I-" He turns his head away, and again he comes across a pair of brown eyes, and the world that comes rushing back when he meets those eyes.</p><p>Uma glares, mouth twisting angrily. "Ben!"</p><p>"<em>I can't.</em>" He says finally, as everything begins to return to him, the colours, the sounds, his own thoughts. "I can't, Uma. I <em>don't</em> love you."</p><p>Uma snaps, and Mal chases her off the side of the boat.</p><p>Mal grows a pair of wings, Uma grows a few tentacles.</p><p>Ben is looking into those soft, familiar brown eyes, and misses it all.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>"Evie," He says, quiet, whispered like a secret, "I think I might be in love you."</p><p>She smiles a little, nodding. "I know."</p><p>The scene playing out in front of him feels like a distant memory, or a vague dream. The moonlight bouncing off of her, bathing her in a soft glow. His heart thumping wildly behind his chest, the sound deafening in his ears.</p><p>"You were always so much stronger than me, always ready to yell at me whenever I was being a moron, or a coward. And God, I just kept falling, the more you told me off, the more you corrected me, the more you pushed me. When I thought you hated me, when I thought I had let you down, that <em>crushed </em>me, and I had no idea why. I think you've ruined me a little."</p><p>For a while nothing but silence follows his confession, before Evie begins to laugh, something light and airy and wonderful.</p><p>Ben wonders why he hadn't figured it out earlier.</p><p>"It's what you deserve," She replies, eventually, "for making me wait so long for you."</p><p>Mal watches on in the distance, as they draw each other close, as their lips finally meet.</p><p>(And her heart doesn't break. No, it doesn't break. And maybe that's better.)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>tone of this one is kinda weird but i hope its enjoyable anyway skldjflsjdfsdf</p><p>(btw at the end mal realises her n ben nvr had anything that was super real or concrete n that they never really understood each other so her seeing him n evie together kinda made her realise it was nvr True love since she wasn't even super heartbroken seeing them together. idk i just didnt wna make mal super sad in this one LKSJFSF)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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